forgive me my "one minute after credits rolled youtube review/response". I have 1200 words here:
http://letterboxd.com/neoraven/film/the-amazing-spider-man-2/
Alright, I'll do a non-spoiler version, maybe a spoiler one later (maybe after I see it a second time???)-
Within 5 minutes of credits rolling, I was incredibly satisfied with this movie and I'll try to tell you why-
* Every scene with Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield plays like it's from a different, much better romantic comedy. This sounds like it's a criticism, but there are A LOT of scenes that are just Stone and Garfield being adorable and elevating the material.
* Dane DeHaan pretty much jumps off the screen. His performance is ELECTRIC (sorry Jaime Foxx ((more on him later)) ). I was often reminded of Jack Nicholson as The Joker with some of his facial expression and zeal playing him. Also, I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this but he also really reminds me of a young Leonardo DiCaprio. I saw shades of Jordan Belfort in his performance as malevolent rich-kid Harry Osborne. Last comparison, and the most-stretching one - he's the best comic book movie villain since Heath Ledger's Joker. This seems like a small compliment, but there have been a LOT of superhero movies since The Dark Knight.
* This movie gets the joy of webslinging. Not that previous movies made it look boring by any stretch! But it makes the genuine joy of flying through the air come across pretty well. Any complaints about "bad CGI" are people with an axe to grind, because I couldn't see anything wrong with the effects.
* Also - the joy of Spider-Man. Oh, this movie gives good quips. It seems juvenile on paper, but I loved him calling Electro "sparkles", and pretty much every light-hearted interaction with crooks in the movie.
* Body FUCKING horror. This movie rivals Sam Raimi's masterful Dr. Octopus origin scene with a couple good scenes showing just how horrific it is to be mutated and become some crazy fucked up radioactive supersoldier / force of electricity / whatever. While this isn't exactly David Cronenberg's Spider-Man (holy shit I would give anything to see THAT movie), I still really liked these couple parts.
* The criticisms of this movie cramming the whole Peter / Harry friendship and background into one movie are a little valid. However, I think the chemistry between DeHaan and Garfield largely was able to get around that. I got vibes of Garfield and Eisenberg's doomed friendship from The Social Network in a couple of their scenes together (Although the roles were slightly swapped... this is nice, poor guy and mean rich guy instead of nice rich guy and bitter poor guy... I digress). Now I won't give the script THAT much credit here at all, but it did a decent job of working his absence from the last movie into the motivation / plot of what's going down now.
* SCIENCE! I fucking love science, and I love when Spider-Man uses science. Spider-Man outsmarting villains is so much more satisfying than Superman just throwing someone through 70 buildings. It's a mild negative that this series slightly downplays the "Peter is a genius" thing, but there are some pretty decent moments in that regard here.
* ACTION! Slightly an offshoot of the "joy of webslinging" part above - the fight and flight scenes in here are really a step up above the last. Partly because Electro and Goblin are more interesting villains as far as powers and doing crazy shit to Spider-Man / around Spider-Man. The Times Square part is pretty visually stunning and all the hundreds of millions this movie cost were, at least, on the screen.
BUT NOW, in the cold light of morning, the euphoria is fading away, and I'll tell you why-
* Aunt May. God bless ya, Sally Field, but uh. You could have stayed on the bench for this one and no one would have noticed and the movie would have been better off for it I think. It's a shame, since I love Aunt May and her scenes with Peter in the previous trilogy are some of the best.
*THAT FIRST FUCKING 5 MINUTES. JESUS CHRIST. This is some of the goddamn stupidest shit filmed in Superhero movie history. And I watched all 97 minutes of Elektra. I'll get into it more spoiler-y later? But fuck, show up late.
* Yeah, everyone is right. The movie is overstuffed. There are way too many subplots going on. This is SLIGHTLY a positive, since at least this makes most scenes feel important. But again, keep it simple stupid.
* Let me tell you a story about American Psycho. During filming, Willem Dafoe as the antagonist detective did each scene three ways - that he was sure Bateman did it, that he had no clue, and that he wasn't sure - and the director used these different takes randomly to set up a sense of unease / weirdness. And it works. So that brings me to Electro. It felt like every other scene, Jaime Foxx played him differently. Maybe this is his fault, or Webb's fault, who knows. But some of the time he was a deadly serious Chris Nolan villain, then he'd be a goofy and silly type villain, and then... not nearly enough, but a little bit, he played him like an actual human being and the Oscar-winner's talent shined through. But there wasn't enough of that. Most all of Electro's scenes without Spider-Man present are a drag. Nothing really ever became clear about his motivations, plans, desires, really any of that. He wasn't a character, he was a glowing blue plot device.
* Who's Alistair Smythe? Who's Felicia Hardy? Why the fuck should I care?
* The editing is better than the first one, but it's still a little all over the place. There are some clever transitions and montages (thanks, Marc Webb!), but it's still a little scattershot. Also, this is a really dumb nit to pick, but whole scenes / sequences from the trailers weren't in the movie at all. It's not the film's fault that I'm expecting something from the dumb trailer. But some of those little parts felt like connective tissue that got cut.
* Not enough Rhino. I would have said this for anything short of "Spider-Man vs. Rhino", but it still stands.
* Chris Cooper is weirdly bad and utterly wasted as Norman Osbourne. I mean, the last thing this movie needs is more periphery scenes / characters. But bleh.
*Mid-credits sequence did nothing for me. And just as a public service announcement - there is nothing after the credits, unless my theater jobbed me.
* It felt like the script gave Peter Parker too many vast, huge emotional swings (pun intended) back and forth over everything. Garfield is a good actor, and handles it fine, but it probably would have had a little more heft with less extreme back and forth drama.
* Discussing this movie as setting up future movies / world-building is something I really don't want to do. But, it's kind of a necessity in this post-Avengers / MCU world. And I'm ever so slightly worried for Spider-Man's future. The set-up stuff for the Sinister Six tedious, too.
So, I guess wrapping up, 3.5 out of 5 stars. Better than good, less than great. I don't think I can really wholeheartedly recommend this if you're not that invested in Spider-Man. The Garfield/Stone chemistry is GREAT, and there's more scenes of them in this one. And the actiony sequences are prettier and more lively than the last one, but it's ironically not... to use a turn of phrase from the movie... blazing its own trail.
